


i have to howl

by endquestionmark



Category: Elementary (TV), Luther (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt "Alice/Sherlock, impulse control issues" by <a href="http://streussal.livejournal.com/">, at the </a><a href="http://sapphisms.livejournal.com/2600.html">Elementary ficathon</a>, where it was <a href="http://sapphisms.livejournal.com/2600.html?thread=20008#t20008">originally posted</a>.</p><p>Warning for mentions of drug use, mentions of fire, mentions of physical violence, and mentions of a past suicide attempt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i have to howl

"Your problem, puppy, is that you just don't think," Alice says, swirling the red stirrer in her coffee.

"On the contrary," Sherlock says. "I think all the time." _That's the problem_ , he would say to anyone but her. Right now he is thinking about Joan, out on her day off - with Marcus Bell? With Ty Morstan? With her parents, forcing a smile? He is thinking about his bees and the winterproofing he will need to do. He is thinking about the inevitable drifts of leaves that will make their gradual way onto his stoop, encroaching tides. He is thinking about the effect of the temperature of coffee on its corrosive tendencies. He is thinking about the way she is tracing a Lorenz butterfly in her capuccino, over and over and over.

She taps the stirrer, and a single drop of near-boiling coffee falls on the back of his hand, and everything narrows down to a single point again.

"Does she do that to you, then," Alice asks, eyes narrowed. She resumes her stirring.

"Even think about going near her," Sherlock says, "and I will personally mail John Luther your hand."

"No, you wouldn't," Alice says. "Even if you don't consider, even you must know he'd burn this city to the ground for that."

"I suppose not," Sherlock says. "I would mail him your hair, though," and his hand flashes, comes back with shorn red, an Ulfa flickknife glittering between his thumb and forefinger. "He might just burn Manhattan for that."

"Are we at an impasse, then," Alice says, flatly curious as ever. "I don't go near your keeper and you won't go near mine."

"Does he know he's your keeper?" Sherlock asks. "At least I do mine the favor of transparency."

"You crashed your keeper's _car_ ," Alice says. "Hardly the best behavior. I hope she collared you for it."

"Do we really have to go into what you did?" Sherlock says. "Zoe Luther, Mark North, Ian Reed - "

"I took the fall for a _murder_ for John," Alice hisses. He catalogs the tiny changes in her expression - eyebrows furrowed, lips turned down, eyes narrowed once again. "You wouldn't do that for her, would you?"

She looks as if, right now, she would pour oil over his head and strike the match herself.

"I don't know," Sherlock says, hands out. Open-palmed, offering; a gesture of supplication.

Just like that, she leans back, relaxes.

"Of course not, puppy," she says. "You never do know until they ask you, do you."

"No," he says, remembering her in London, a razor blade, a syringe, the hiss of a burner. Her voice, wobbling at the drop of a hat, pleading. _It wasn't me, it was him, he wouldn't let me leave_ , and Sherlock sitting there amidst the mirrors and lines and a burner, still alight, and taking it, the weight of it an albatross, a millstone, following him all the way here. "I didn't."

"And you never do think," she says. "I knew I wouldn't die for him. Too early for that, wouldn't you say? I knew I'd have options."

She's far too disciplined to run fingers down her wrist, the way he would, but he knows she is newly aware of the knotted white scars all the same.

"But you'd throw yourself in the mud for her," Alice says, musingly. "Not a moment's hesitation, and you'd let yourself drown."

"At least I know it," he says. "Do you know what you'd do for John Luther?"

"Yes," Alice says. "Leave him. Would you do the same?"

He has no answer, and so he walks away, dropping a packet of sugar in the bin, pushing through the swinging glass doors into the paper-dry air and the blur of pedestrians.

"Don't turn your back on me," he hears her say, an edge of impatience betrayed in her voice, and keeps walking, willing to stretch her temper with distance, prod the dragon and watch it start to glow cherry-red. For the fun of it, in the end. For no good reason.

She starts to laugh, then. He doesn't need to ask her why. She is bound to John and he is bound to a brownstone in Brooklyn, the appraising stare of Joan Watson, _loyal puppy headed home_.

She could stab him for the insult. She's done so before. She'd do that again, impulsive and rash though it would be.

He'll take his chances.


End file.
